Back on a Motorbike: Old-School Reporting at the Tour de France

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A view of the Tour de France from the press motorcycle on Tuesday as the overall leader, Chris Froome, in yellow, moved through cars behind the main field in Stage 10.CreditIan Austen/The New York Times

REVEL, France — Most of the reporters at the Tour de France, including me, don’t see much of the racing through their own eyes.

Our daily routine instead involves hanging around at the start for interviews, then jumping into cars and racing ahead to the press room at the finish line to catch the last couple of hours through the all-seeing eye of television. Even the handful of reporters who congregate at the finish line tend to keep their backs to the road to focus on three televisions inside a stuffy tent.

But in the decades before the host broadcaster, France Télévisions, developed its elaborate live broadcasting system, many reporters followed the Tour from the back of a motorbike.

On Tuesday, I got to experience that bit of the Tour’s past, if not with a cigarette dangling from my lips. Motorbikes never went away for broadcasters and photographers. But after a long absence, the race organizers reintroduced one or two motorbikes a day for print and online reporters.

Feeling somewhat out of place wearing a raincoat and long pants on a warm and sunny morning, I headed down to the Escaldes-Engordany district of Andorra. Picture a Times Square for tax-free shopping that features an extraordinary number of perfume shops. There, just ahead of the start line, sat Motorcycle No. 539, whose driver, Gaétan Prime, would take me down the 196 kilometers, or 122 miles, to Revel, France.

The stage was won, I later learned from television, by Michael Matthews, a sprinter with the Australian Orica-BikeExchange team. Chris Froome, of Britain and Team Sky, retained the yellow jersey of the overall leader.

Prime drives a motorcycle for a living, but mostly under much different circumstances. He is a police officer in Toulouse and a member of a rapid response team that relies on two wheels to zip through traffic jams. Given that the armada of vehicles that follow the Tour around is always verging on becoming a traffic jam, he seemed perfectly qualified.

The president of a large bicycle club and husband of a seven-time French national track cycling champion, Prime uses his motorbike skills at bike races about 50 days a year.

He made it clear that he did not do it for the money.

“Passion, it’s passion,” he said as we put on bright green helmets and started up the road just before the riders’ start. There was less than five minutes remaining, but a surprisingly large number of cyclists who had ridden up the route to stretch their legs were now heading back to take their positions.

Getting out of Andorra and back into France involved a 22.6-kilometer, or 14-mile, mountain pass climb. As we slowed to a crawl not far up the climb, the Tour’s internal radio system told us that Peter Sagan, the current world champion, had formed a group of breakaway riders. It soon neared our bike, and one of its members attacked and headed toward us in the hope that we would provide him shelter from the wind. Prime’s neck-snapping turn of the Kawasaki 1400 GTR’s throttle swiftly eliminated that prospect.

At the summit, I was no longer overdressed. A dense fog cut visibility to about 30 feet, drenched our clothes and made for a chilly entry into France.

Except for the gendarmerie’s elite Republican Guard motorcycle corps, a red-jacketed “controller,” who is also on a motorbike, dictates the position of all of the other 70 motorbikes in the race.

A seemingly unbreakable code dictated who was allowed to get close to the riders at a given moment. But France Télévisions’ camera bikes appeared free to go pretty much anywhere they wanted, provided that they did not pace or endanger the cyclists.

One thing that is rarely caught by cameras but is a frequent sight from a motorbike, is riders’ urinating, either from their saddles or at the side of the road.

The climb and the foggy descent fractured the field into more than a half-dozen groups. Desperation was on the faces of the riders at the very back as they rode flat-out at a point in the race where everyone would normally be taking it relatively easy.

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The Tour de France race controller, in red, held back motorcycles along the course on Tuesday.CreditIan Austen/The New York Times

We were in Prime’s home region, and it turned out that he is something of a celebrity there. We stopped for a quick chat with a few of his friends and their two school-age daughters. He slowed to high-five a boy who rides for his bike club. Prime’s name was called out from the side of the road along with those of the Tour favorites.

All the while, the radar systems showing motorists their speeds seemed permanently locked on displaying, “Danger!” Our speed through the day seemed to range from a walking pace to about 80 miles an hour, though there were times when the force of the wind was too great for me to lean around for a peek at the speedometer.

Some radio reporters did rolling interviews with team directors in their cars. The closest I came to an interview, however, was when we were cursed by a group of riders who were trying to make their way back toward the main field.

The increased size of the Tour and the faster pace of the pack in the 21st century make motorbikes less than ideal for watching the racing. Much of the time, I was peering up at it through a forest of team car roof racks, each laden with 10 bikes and a brace of wheels.

But with 25 kilometers remaining in the race, I witnessed a key moment up close and unobstructed. Sagan attacked and split the break, leaving behind the 2014 Tour winner, Vincenzo Nibali of Italy. Somewhat cruelly, we pulled away from Nibali at too high a speed to catch the expression on his face.

As for the finish, like all vehicles following the Tour, we were turned off the course just short of the finish line. Revel’s maze of roads and race-related blockades, however, made it impossible for us to find our way back to the finish to see Matthews squeeze out Sagan and win the stage.